


Sooner or Later

by flyingcarpet



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-02
Updated: 2009-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:29:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingcarpet/pseuds/flyingcarpet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk can wait for a good thing, if he has to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sooner or Later

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to jumperkid, green and thistlerose for their assistance.

Sooner  
"Bones," Jim said accusingly. "Why aren't you drinking with me?"

"I am," McCoy answered, half-amused and half-disgusted with him. It was a familiar feeling. "At least, I was for the first five."

"Pfffff," Jim said, waving his hand dismissively. "You gotta loosen up a little. Stop counting your drinks all the time."

"We can't all go to class hung over," McCoy told him. In fact, he only had one class the next day, and it was late in the afternoon. All morning he'd be on staff at the drop-in clinic, testing cadets for sexually transmitted diseases and interstellar flu bugs. He'd need a clear head and a strong stomach, neither of which he'd find in some trendy bar filled with chrome and colored lights. "C'mon, let's get you home."

"'M not ready to go home."

"Yes, you are." McCoy dropped a few credits on the bar and stood, attempting to steer him toward the door.

"Hellooo, ladies," Jim called after a couple of passing skirts. McCoy wondered if he'd even glanced at the girls' faces. It was doubtful whether he was talking for their benefit at all; more likely, he was putting on a show for the rest of the patrons to prove just how much fun he was having, making McCoy the bad guy who ruined his fun and dragged him home at a reasonable hour so he didn't get thrown out of the Academy.

As soon as they'd stepped through the door and out into the foggy street, Jim seemed to sober up significantly, confirming McCoy's hypothesis. He huffed, not particularly happy at being right, and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. Damn cold city, anyway.

Jim threw an arm over his shoulders as they walked up the hill toward the Academy, and McCoy could feel his own skin warm to the touch. Medically speaking, it was impossible that he would notice a change in his body temperature from such brief contact, through so many layers of clothing. It was just the way his own body reacted to Jim; his blood rushing to the surface of his skin, his heart pounding like a teenager's. He hated himself a little bit every time it happened, and a little bit more every time he thought about giving in to it. Which was more and more often, these days. It didn't help when Jim cast those sidelong glances in his direction, watching him when he thought he was being subtle. Jim was about as subtle as a Vulcan nerve pinch.

The best he could hope for with Jim Kirk -- the absolute best -- was a fun roll in the hay tonight and a few more nights like it, when Jim was too drunk or too lazy to find someone better, only to be quickly replaced when Jim was feeling energetic enough to go out on the prowl again. There were a thousand reasons why tumbling into bed together would be a bad idea, but foremost in his mind was the possibility of what it might do to their friendship.

Leonard McCoy had lost everything when a relationship crumbled, once. He wouldn't let it happen again.

Jim stumbled over an uneven paving stone and leaned his weight more heavily on McCoy's shoulders. Against his better judgment, McCoy wrapped one arm around Jim's waist and held him up.

"Damnit, Jim, I'm not carrying you up this hill. You're gonna have to walk."

"Aww, you're no fun, Bones," Jim complained, but he pushed himself up straight and trudged up the long, steep hill under his own power, the evidence of inebriation fading fast. At the crest, they could see the campus laid out before them, a maze of tall concrete buildings interspersed with green lawns, dotted with trees and pedestrian pathways. The closest building was Kirk's dormitory; the medical school was located on the far side of campus, so McCoy would have another half-mile to walk alone in the cold, which suited him just fine.

As they neared the dormitory, Jim threw his arm around McCoy's shoulders again, and he tried to fight down the inevitable response. "Why don't you come in?" Jim asked, his breath warm against the skin of McCoy's neck.

"I'm not carrying you up the stairs, either," McCoy said, trying to shrug off his arm without any real success.

"That's not what I mean and you know it," Jim said, still leaning far too close. McCoy could feel his palms starting to sweat deep in his jacket pockets, despite the cold. This was the moment he'd been hoping to avoid for months, ever since he'd realized that this friendship was too important to both of them to let it fall apart for one night of drunken pleasure.

"Don't you ever think about it?" Jim asked. "You and me, Bones?" He pressed an inch closer and began nuzzling at the sensitive spot just below McCoy's ear.

To his horror, McCoy felt a shiver of heat run down his spine in response, and shrugged and jerked his arm, elbowing Jim in the center of his chest, knocking him backward several inches.

"You're like a goddamned dog in heat," he said as he walked away, without looking back at Jim, hoping desperately that his response had gone unnoticed. "Go sleep it off."

His heart was pounding like he'd just run the cadet fitness course, and he couldn't draw a deep breath. Either he'd saved their friendship or damned it, but with any luck he could walk away and Jim wouldn't remember this in the morning.

Of course, luck was always on the side of Jim Kirk. McCoy had only taken a few steps before Jim caught up with him.

"Bones! Hey, Bones, don't be like that," he said, voice almost a whine as he reached out and caught McCoy by the arm. "Hey, why not, huh?"

McCoy turned around slowly. "Why not?" he repeated. He was never good at biting his tongue and the bourbon had loosened his resolve enough that words he never meant to say spilled out of his mouth. "How about this: you're ten kinds of a mess, chasing every set of legs in skirts or pants all over campus, you probably have twelve different diseases that haven't been diagnosed yet and I don't even need to count the ones that have, and you're a self-absorbed, emotionally stunted asshole who falls in and out of bed with someone new on a daily basis, if not hourly." He paused, breathing hard. Even as the words passed his lips, he'd wanted to stop them, pull them back, un-say it, but he hadn't been able to.

"And besides," he added, "you're my best friend."

There was a moment of horrible silence. McCoy felt the liquor churn in his stomach and thought that he might throw up, drunk or not.

Jim finally looked up, a halfway-convincing grin on his face. "That all you got?" he asked.

McCoy had to laugh. "What d'you want, a data file? I'll get right to work on it."

Jim didn't laugh, though. "You sure?" he asked, brilliant blue eyes looking up at McCoy through long lashes. The dormitory quad was well lit, but they were standing at a distance, half in shadow, with fog swirling around them and blocking out the stars above. "The offer's still open." He licked his lips, slowly, and McCoy found that he could not pull his eyes away. "Cause I've thought about it. I've thought about it a lot, Bones."

The familiar nickname sounded suddenly obscene on Jim's tongue, and it was that more than anything else that snapped McCoy back to reality after a long moment of indecision. "I'm sure," he said, without really knowing what he was saying. He wasn't sure about anything, except that giving in to Jim tonight could not possibly be worth the hole it would tear in their friendship. And right now, that was the one thing that mattered.

"I'm sure," he said, trying his best to ignore the look on Jim's face and the implications of him saying _I've thought about it a lot._ "Go sleep it off," he said again, and turned to leave. This time, Jim let him.

 

Later  
McCoy looked up from his desk in the corner of the _Enterprise_ 's sickbay and watched the Captain pause inside the door.

Gold was Jim's color, McCoy thought to himself. The command tunic brought out the gleam in his blond hair and the glow in his skin, even in the surgery's sterile light. But more than that, the uniform brought out something in Jim that the red cadet's outfit never had: his spine was straighter, his eyes more alert and his expression more serious than McCoy could remember. The weight of command served to keep his feet firmly on the ground, balancing out the buoying effect of his enormous ego.

Jim made his way through the large room, nodding casually to the techs and the nurses on duty, stopping to say hello to one or two of them. Although he smiled and laughed, to McCoy's familiar eye he was nothing like the manic Jim Kirk from the Academy, who would chase after a pretty face like a dog after a passing car. The charming exterior he displayed today might look the same to some observers, but to McCoy he was calmer, more focused and mature than he had ever been.

Leaning back in his chair, McCoy watched unabashedly as Jim made his way through the maze of biobeds and beeping machines to where Ensign Chekov rested with his leg propped up on a stack of pillows. He told himself that this was simply professional curiosity; it would always be an event when the Captain visited the sickbay of his ship, even for a simple courtesy visit to an injured officer. Any CMO would observe his Captain in this situation.

It was a half-truth at best, and McCoy knew it. The other half of the equation was the real reason that he watched Jim when he could, when he had an excuse. Leonard McCoy wasn't a real introspective guy, but the passage of time had shown him things about himself that he couldn't unlearn. Whether he wanted to or not, he carried a torch for his best friend. He accepted it now, but that didn't mean he'd ever do anything about it.

He'd had his chance once, one night when Jim had made a drunken pass outside the first-year dormitories. He'd turned Jim down that night, and lost his chance. It had been the right call at the time, McCoy knew that.

Still, a part of him wondered what might have been.

 

Sooner  
"Bones, I'm not letting you drink alone tonight," Jim declared, grabbing the flask from his hand and slipping it safely into his own pocket. "This time, the drinks are on me." What kind of a best friend would he be, to let McCoy drown his sorrows all alone on the anniversary of his divorce?

"Oh, lucky me," McCoy looked up from the little kitchen table, a bit bleary-eyed already, and Jim could tell that the 'drinking alone' portion of the evening was well under way. Bones's cheeks were ruddy and his lips were wet and bitten, and Jim had to blink away the images that sprang to mind. It was emotion and alcohol that made him look that way, nothing more.

Jim mentally scratched off the list of plans he'd made for the evening, beginning with McCoy's favorite dark, hole-in-the-wall bar and ending with some kind of manly bonding over the horrors of womankind or else a visit to the Orion pleasure club across the Bay. He tried not to act visibly disappointed, and instead grabbed the other chair in the tiny kitchenette and straddled it, sitting down across from McCoy.

"You wanna talk about it?" Jim asked, resting his arms on the back of the chair and propping his chin on them.

"No," McCoy said promptly. "Now will you give me that back?"

Jim pretended to think about it. He took the flask out of his pocket, opened it and sniffed the contents as if he were a discerning connoisseur, and as if Bones ever drank anything other than one kind of Kentucky Bourbon. He took a sip. "Mmmm... no."

Wobbling only a little, McCoy stood up from the table, removed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, and crossed the apartment to the tiny balcony that was its shining feature. Kirk shrugged and followed.

With the sliding door open, there was just enough room on the balcony to fit two men and two bottles of beer, but that was all. Jim stepped outside and set his elbows on the balcony railing, leaning forward and looking out to sea. From where they stood, the ocean was a deep slate gray, topped with flecks of white. A thick layer of fog rested on top of the water, sliding closer to the city as night fell.

"I still want to know who you had to blow to get this view," he said conversationally.

McCoy snorted back a laugh. "Half the rooms in the med building get this view," he pointed out.

Jim was unimpressed with that logic. "Somebody must've gotten a lot of favors," he said. "Wonder how I get that job?"

"We both know that's a step down from Starship Captain."

"I just gotta think of a way to combine the two," Jim said. "Lateral thinking, baby." He grinned at McCoy, who gave him a half-smile back. For a few seconds, Jim thought he'd actually managed to successfully distract him from the anniversary he'd already begun to commemorate.

McCoy tipped back his beer bottle and took a long sip, and Jim watched greedily as the muscles in his neck flexed and pulsed while he drank. He set down his bottle and turned his face away from Jim, toward the ocean.

"Don't get me wrong," Bones said. "It's a great view. It's just not..."

For once in his life, Jim said nothing. What could he say? Bones was... he was _Bones_ , and Jim would lie down in traffic to help him in a second. But no amount of self-harm would make a difference right now. He couldn't know what it was like to plan your life around another person, only to have that ripped away. All he could do was to be here for him.

They stood side by side and did not talk for several minutes. McCoy watched the ocean, and Jim watched him, letting his thoughts stray to places he rarely did. McCoy's hands gripped the railing, knuckles white with pressure. He had big, strong hands with long fingers: the hands of a surgeon. Jim could imagine those hands on his body, trailing over his hips, massaging his back, slipping below the waist... They had come close once, but that moment was past, and he pushed the idea away. Regret and longing were things Jim did not do well, emotions he tried to distract himself from as often as he could find a willing partner to keep his mind off Bones.

Finally, McCoy spoke again. "It was supposed to be forever," he said, his voice rougher than usual. "Til death do us part, and all that old-fashioned bullshit."

This time, Jim felt obligated to fill the void. "And instead you're stuck with me," he said lightly, staying far from the dangerous thoughts he'd allowed himself to entertain a moment before. "C'mon, why don't you let me take you out? Live it up. Enjoy your reclaimed freedom." It was no substitute, he knew. Nothing he said could fix the fact that forever hadn’t gone as planned, but he could provide a distraction. Distractions were something Jim knew all about, after all.

He expected McCoy to say _no_ like he always did, even when he eventually caved and said yes in the end. Instead, he said, "Yeah, all right. Just... gimme a minute, will you?"

Jim clapped him on the shoulder and stepped back inside the apartment, draining his bottle at the kitchen sink. He tried not to watch McCoy as he wiped his face and set his shoulders, as he stepped inside the bathroom and ran the water in the sink.

While Jim waited, his mind turned back to the night several months before, when he'd offered himself to Bones and been shut down. At the time, the rejection had hit him like a fist to the gut, and pretending ignorance had been his only defense. Now, though... Standing in Bones's kitchen while he pulled himself together, Jim knew he'd make that choice again a thousand times. What Bones needed now was a friend, not someone to make demands on him or pull him into a relationship when he still wasn't free of the last one.

Bones was always there when Jim needed him, ready with a suture and an anesthetic as often as an acerbic word of advice or an encouraging grin. And no matter how many times Jim fucked up, Bones was always there to point it out. Lying down in traffic might not make a difference, but if setting aside his own twisted fantasies about his best friend would help him, Jim would do it in a second. In fact, it was already done. Forgotten.

"All right, Kid, where're we going?"

"Anyplace you want, Bones."

 

Later  
Jim looked up and caught McCoy's eye across the sickbay. He was sitting behind his desk, surveying the room like a king looking over his domain, like a captain seated on the bridge of his very own starship. Jim grinned.

To his eye, McCoy looked more at home and more comfortable here on the _Enterprise_ than he'd ever seen him before. Oh, he'd complain for hours about the hazards of space, the cold and darkness and infernal technology. When it came down to it, though, he knew there was no other place that McCoy would rather be. It was a good change from the days when McCoy stayed at the Academy because he had no other place to go, when he put up with Jim because he had no one else who cared.

As he made his way across sickbay toward McCoy’s desk, Jim felt a pang of regret, and shoved it to the back of his mind. Bones was his confidant and caretaker, his partner in crime (well, more like the opposite of crime these days, but whatever). They didn't need to risk messing up their friendship by pushing for more.

It was an excuse, and Jim knew it. Fact was, if Bones wanted to, they'd be in bed so fast that time might actually travel backward. But he didn't want to bring sex into the mix and so Jim wasn't gonna push it. He could find a willing partner on any planet or space station the Enterprise visited, and a couple on every deck of the ship: he didn't need to force the issue with Bones.

By the time he reached McCoy's desk through the obstacle course of beds and machines and busy staffers, Bones had gotten out two tumblers and a bottle of some brown liquid.

"Drink?" Bones asked, pouring before he could answer.

Jim accepted the glass and dropped into the visitor's chair, propping his feet up on the other side of the desk.

"Don't do that," Bones said reflexively, frowning. Jim grinned in response and dropped his feet.

"So how was your day, Dear?" he asked, and only grinned wider when McCoy snorted derisively.

Jim swirled the liquor in his glass and sipped slowly, listening to the cadence of McCoy's voice as he talked.

 

Sooner  
It was a short shuttle flight from Iowa to San Francisco, so McCoy managed not to throw up on anyone. It helped that the kid sitting next to him, the only other one not in uniform, (Christ, he didn't even _have_ a uniform yet) talked the whole way, telling him some long, involved story about a goat and a marble quarry. It sounded like something McCoy would've done himself ten years before, and he couldn't help but smile, pushing his panic back down to a manageable level. The kid also drank a solid two-thirds of his emergency flask, so any distraction was welcome.

He'd given his name as Jim Kirk, and when McCoy asked what the hell Jim was doing on the shuttle, he shrugged and said he didn't have anything better to do. As a method of making life-changing decisions it was probably not the best, but it was one that Leonard McCoy could understand. His own life was in tatters: the divorce took practically everything he had except his medical license. When it turned out that was the one thing Starfleet was looking for... well, he didn't have any better offers, that was for sure.

San Francisco seemed cold and busy and modern when they arrived, full of concrete buildings and people in uniforms, and McCoy was out of his element. He wondered what the hell he was doing there at all, a grown man living in a dorm again like a teenager.

Then every so often, Jim would show up at his door, drink down his last swallow of whiskey, and drag him out to some bar so they could stagger home in the pearly-gray fog of dawn. Against his better judgment, McCoy had fun.

Before he knew it, the Academy had begun to feel like home. It was more than a little bit due to the presence of one James T. Kirk.

 

Later  
McCoy didn't speak as they walked through the corridors of the ship, making their way up from sickbay to the command officers' quarters. When they reached his room, Kirk punched in his code and they stepped inside.

Surprised that McCoy had followed him into his quarters instead of continuing down the hall to his own room, Jim turned to him. "You're pretty quiet today, Bones. What's wrong? Is it Chekov? If his injury is more serious than you've told me, I want to know, even if--"

"Nah, he'll be fine, Jim. That ain't it." He rubbed his neck, as if he were nervous. "Just out of sorts is all, I guess." He sat down on the sofa that was positioned against the wall in the living area, and smiled wanly. "Feelin' old."

Jim turned and poured out a drink for each of them, thinking it might be necessary if they were about to have a heart-to-heart. "I'm the opposite," he said. "On that diplomatic mission last month, when I had to negotiate between the two ambassadors? One of them was _four times_ my age, Bones. He didn't want to listen to me." He fell into an armchair beside the couch, slouching comfortably.

"He did, though." McCoy chuckled, probably remembering the look on the old alien's face when he realized that this young human was the Federation's designated representative. "You're doing a good job, kid. Better than I thought you would, if I'm being honest."

"Thanks for the support," Jim said dryly. Compliments were rare enough from Bones, and he should've simply accepted it and moved on, but for some reason tonight he couldn't. Impulse drove his next comment, along with the vague sense of nostalgia that McCoy was giving off. "I thought I was 'a self-absorbed, emotionally stunted asshole.'"

Bones blinked at him for a minute, trying to identify the source of the comment. When he finally did, he flushed a dark red, starting with his neck and moving up to his ears and cheeks. "I thought you forgot all about that," he said.

Jim grinned and leaned back in his chair. "How could I forget?" he asked. "It isn't every day you get shot down by your best friend."

"You remembered all those things I said and you didn't..." Bones trailed off, shaking his head and looking down at his glass. He didn't meet Jim's eyes.

Jim just shrugged. "What was I gonna do? You're my best friend, Bones." The rejection had surprised him more than it hurt at the time, but it was his words that had rankled more than anything else, probably because he'd hit a little too close to the truth for comfort. "And you weren't wrong. I _was_ ten kinds of a mess back then."

"No, you weren't," McCoy said, gulping down his drink and still avoiding eye contact. "I think the Federation has proved me wrong on that score." When he looked up and met Jim's eyes finally, it was almost a shock. "I was wrong about a lot of things that night," he said softly.

His pupils were dilated, a broad black circle wrapped in a tiny ring of soft green, Jim noticed clinically as his mind processed the statement.

As a rule, Jim Kirk did not hesitate. He took pride in being decisive, in boldly going where no one had gone before. So when one part of his mind froze at McCoy's statement, it was an unfamiliar feeling.

McCoy drained his glass and set it down a little too hard. The noise echoed off the room's bare walls as he stood and made for the door. "This little chat has been real nice, Jim, but I gotta--"

Jim let his natural instinct take over, pushing past his bizarre inaction. "Bones, wait." McCoy stopped just as he reached the door, with his back to the room. Jim reached out one hand and touched his shoulder, turning him slowly so that they were face to face.

 _I was wrong about a lot of things that night_ , Bones had said. And there was really only one important thing from that night: the rest was window-dressing. Jim knew that statement for what it was, and he knew if he didn't take this chance now, he'd regret it for a long time to come. He didn't need to ask for clarification; the situation was perfectly clear. There were only two possible courses of action open now, and no way was he going to let Bones walk out the door without making his own opinion on the matter equally clear.

He did the only thing left to him. Leaning close to Bones, he pressed a kiss to his mouth, soft and not too aggressive but with his lips parted and his intent unmistakable.

Bones drew in a sharp breath when he drew away, but said nothing. For a long moment, Jim thought he must've miscalculated.

"The offer's always open," he said softly, beginning to step back. The last thing he wanted was to ruin what they had, but if there was a chance that Bones wanted more, he couldn't let that chance get away.

"Goddamn it, Jim," McCoy growled and stepped after him, grabbing his head with both hands and holding him in place as he crushed his mouth to Jim's.

This was the kiss Jim had been imagining for years, the kiss he'd known would be worth the wait, the reason he'd given McCoy the space he needed but never given up on the idea of more. It was worth every moment of those years in between. Bones's mouth was hot and eager, insistent on his own. His hands fisted in Jim's hair and his body pressed forward with a muscular force that Jim returned just as eagerly. He arched up into Bones's broad chest, wrapping his arms around his back and pulling him closer, deepening the kiss with every part of himself.

Carefully, Jim turned their bodies and walked Bones backward toward the sofa he'd been sitting on only a minute before, wanting to steer Bones without making him feel that he was out of control. Jim had wanted this -- wanted him -- for so long, he wasn't about to fuck this up now by pushing too hard. He told himself that this would be only what Bones wanted: only that, and no more. He repeated it to himself as he felt the edge of the couch hit the back of his knees, as he grasped Bones' shoulders and fell backwards, pulling him down to the soft surface.

With their bodies pressed together from shoulder to knee, Jim could feel Bones' erection pressing against his own through several layers of fabric and knew that he had not _entirely_ miscalculated. With difficulty on the narrow surface of the sofa, he twisted and manipulated their bodies until Bones lay on his back and Jim was poised above him. He ran his palms down Bones' chest, and pulled the blue uniform tunic and black undershirt from his waistband, breaking the kiss for the first time to tug the shirts off over Bones' head.

Bones took over, pulling his own shirt off over his head, and Jim grinned to himself as he sat back and did the same.

"Jim." Bones' voice was characteristically rough, but strangely soft and uncertain, stopping him in place with his shirt halfway over his face. "What are we doing?"

Jim pulled his shirt the rest of the way off and dropped it on the floor. "You want a schematic, _Doctor_?" he asked with a grin.

McCoy's face twisted in irritation, and Jim felt his stomach drop. He was _not_ going to let this go wrong, not now when Bones was right here within his grasp, between his legs. He knew full well they'd already passed the point of no return, as far as friendship went.

McCoy opened his mouth to say something, but before he could speak, Jim leaned forward and cut him off with a kiss. Their bare chests pressed together, skin-to-skin, and Jim felt his body warm at the contact.

"Whatever you want, Bones," Jim said, pulling back far enough to speak and looking down into those uncertain green eyes. "Anything," he promised, hardly even knowing what he was saying, but sure that this would be worth any price.

"I can't--" McCoy started to say, bringing his hands up to Jim's shoulders, pushing him away just a couple of inches and holding him there, so that they were outside the range of lips and teeth and tongue. "I can't be your backup plan, kid."

Now it was Jim's turn to be annoyed, but he brushed it off and focused in on the main target. "Backup plan?" he repeated. "You know how long I've wanted this -- wanted you?" He ground his hips down, pressing his cock against McCoy's, making his desire absolutely clear. A jolt of pleasure shot through his body and McCoy's eyes fluttered shut for a moment with a mirror of that sensation. It was all the evidence that Jim needed that for all his resistance, Bones wanted this too.

"You were never the backup," he said, looking straight into Bones's eyes and trying to make three years of wanting and waiting come through in just a look, three years of settling for the closest pretty face instead of the one he'd always come back to. "And you never will be."

McCoy's eyes opened wider as he realized what Jim was saying, and his breath hitched. "You mean that?" he asked, his fingers clenching on Jim's shoulders as if he were preparing to shove him off onto the floor if he said the wrong thing.

"Every word," Jim said, watching his eyes closely for any hint of doubt or acceptance. "It was always you, Bones."

McCoy's hands never loosened on his shoulders, his elbows still braced to hold Jim just a few inches above where he wanted to be, but he surged up to meet him, bringing their lips together in another eager kiss.

For the first time, Jim was exactly where he wanted to be. Every reason to wait and forget was gone, every barrier pushed away.

He forged ahead, thrusters on full.


End file.
